Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Stepping out of the parking lot (which I have come to realize is the former site of our old 1960's homemade baseball diamond in a by then abandoned hay field we mowed with many a "borrowed" dad's lawnmower), I can't help but notice the "circular-ness" of the stone piling of a remnant of wide "stone wall" just beyond the "bulldozer edge" of the disturbed landscape. It's a little similar and a little different than the Curious Circles I'd observed the day before in another town ten miles away.

And yes, I know: these photos don't really show those smaller circles of stacked stone well.

Maybe next time I will get a good capture...

Trying the panorama feature of the camera.

I wandered over to another segment...

Pondered if this boulder was out of place, noting the less weathered side now visible, wondering if it had been shaped by human hands, if I was seeing purposeful "fracture marks on stone:"

And then through the trees and little bit of spring green, I spotted a boulder I missed, maybe some other stones placed on top of it:

"Well now," I thought. "That's some interesting stuff going on here - how did I miss this one?"

A fallen part of the stone stack?

There was another too, very "leg-like," if this were a stone turtle puzzle...

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Well, I went to
look for some citable bona-fide published and maybe even peer reviewed texts of
quotable outright denials of the existence of any kind of Indigenous Stonework
in early New England – and quickly the
ran into a stone wall when I looked in a stone wall book (I am not sure what I meant by that - the stone wall against critical thinking?? A Stone Wall Built of Assumptions???). I looked at another
stone wall book, then looked up a couple articles from reliable sources, and
they all imply that there were no stone walls in the early days of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony where the “oldest of fences” were the wooden rail
fences, enclosures that were related to Puritan Manurance.

What the heck is “manurance?” Is that what that local farmer was doing
just a few stinky weeks ago in the field across the road? Who starts this all
confusion about fences, stone fences, stone walls and property boundaries and
“enclosures?”

Turns out this
guy seems to be the one:

Engraving depicting Winthrop being carried across the Mystic
River

John Winthrop Defends the Right of Puritans to Settle on
Indian Land (1629):

“John Winthrop
(1588–1649), lawyer and leader of the 1630 migration of English Puritans to
Massachusetts Bay Colony, penned a brief document in 1629 that answered several
objections to the project. In the passage below, he drew on the Bible to
justify settling land that was already occupied by other “sons of Adam.”
Earlier in the text, he had asserted that “The whole earth is the Lord’s garden
and he hath given it to the sons of Adam to be tilled and improved by them.”
The argument below reflects this understanding of the proper relationship
between humans and the land. Non-standard spellings have been modernized.”
—D. Voelker

[Question.] What warrant have we to take that land, which is
and hath been of long time possessed of others the sons of Adam?

Ans[wer]. That which
is common to all is proper to none. This savage people ruleth over many lands
without title or property; for they
enclose no ground, neither have they cattle to maintain it, but remove
their dwellings as they have occasion, or as they can prevail against their
neighbors. And why may not Christians have liberty to go and dwell amongst them
in their wastelands and woods
(leaving them such places as they have manured
for their corn) as lawfully as Abraham did among the Sodomites? For God hath
given to the sons of men a twofold right to the earth; there is a natural right
and a civil right. The first right was natural when men held the earth in
common, every man sowing and feeding where he pleased: Then, as men and cattle
increased, they appropriated some parcels of ground by enclosing and peculiar
manurance, and this in time got them a civil right. Such was the right
which Ephron the Hittite had to the field of Machpelah, wherein Abraham could
not bury a dead corpse without leave, though for the out parts of the country which
lay common, he [Abraham] dwelt upon them and took the fruit of them at his
pleasure. This appears also in Jacob and his sons, who fed their flocks as
boldly in the Canaanites’ land, for he [Jacob] is said to be lord of the
country; and at Dotham and all other places [where] men accounted nothing their
own, but that which they had appropriated by their own industry . . . . 2dly,
There is more than enough for them and us. 3dly, God hath consumed the natives
with a miraculous plague, whereby the greater part of the country is left void
of inhabitants. 4thly, We shall come in with good leave of the natives.

SOURCE: John Winthrop, “General Considerations for the
Plantations in New England, with an Answer to Several Objections,” Winthrop
Papers, vol. II (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1931), p. 120.

“The earliest walls that can be authenticated are those of
the first English colonists and probably date from shortly after the arrival of
the Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620. Undoubtedly, a few rare stone structures
were built by Native Americans prior to colonization, but none are the
conventional elongate stack of stones bordering an enclosure or serving as a
foundation for a wooden structure.”

The earliest walls that can be authenticated are those of
the first English colonists and probably date from shortly after the arrival of
the Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620. Undoubtedly, a few rare stone structures
were built by Native Americans prior to colonization, but none are the
conventional elongate stack of stones bordering an enclosure or serving as a
foundation for a wooden structure.

Most of New England’s stone ruins clearly do not predate
European exploration. Rather, they are part of an enormous constellation of
stone structures created almost entirely by the agro-ecology of the Historic
Period. Here, I refer to the obvious artifacts of that era such as stone walls,
lanes, foundations, fills, and and freestanding piles. http://stonewall.uconn.edu/investigation/pre-european-contact/

Dr. Ives abstract states: “Most of the cairnfields in New
England’s forested hills were likely built by nineteenth-century farmers to
prolong the usefulness of increasingly stony, overgrazed pastures. This working
hypothesis is supported by a historical context, observations of cairnfields in
Rhode Island, and a formation model that accounts for important cultural and
environmental factors. Cairnfields may yield new and important insights into
some of the more prosaic, historically overlooked dimensions of agrarian pasts,
particularly when their study leverages a landscape approach within the context
of farmstead archaeology.”

Yoked
hogs: According to Sarah O'Shea in, "Role of Stone Walls in
New England Agriculture,"

...fencing was not only necessary but soon became
mandatory. New laws and regulations throughout the towns ordered fences to be
in good repair. Fencing was continually a subject of legislation throughout the
colonies. A fence viewer was appointed at town meetings...

Open land was susceptible to damage by any wandering
livestock, and proper fencing ensured that this vital land would be protected.
A fence was considered in good repair if it met the specific height regulations
of the town. These regulations varied according to which type of livestock
being enclosed or bounded from. All of the measurements, however, were based on
the Gunter chain. The gunter chain was a chain consisting of 100 links each
link being 7.92 inches long."